Georgia was not
ready to make resistance, and at most advocated some form of
retaliatory legislation. It was evident that even in the Cotton-
belt and the Gulf States there was in the minds of sober people
the gravest objection to revolutionary measures.

It happened, most unfortunately, that the South-Carolina Legislature
assembled early in November for the purpose of choosing Presidential
electors, who in that State were never submitted to the popular
vote. While it might seem extravagant to ascribe the revolution
which convulsed the country to an event so disconnected and apparently
so inadequate, it is nevertheless true that the sudden _furor_
which seized a large number of the Southern people came directly
from that event. Indeed, it is scarcely an exaggeration to say
that the great civil war, which shook a continent, was precipitated
by the fact that the South-Carolina Legislature assembled at the
unpropitious moment. Without taking time for reflection, without
a review of the situation, without stopping to count the cost, with
a boldness born of passionate resentment against the North, the
rash men of South Carolina fired the train. In a single hour they
created in their own State a public sentiment which would not brook
delay or contradiction or argument. The leaders of it knew that
the sober second thought, even in South Carolina, would be dangerous
to the scheme of a Southern confederacy. They knew that the feeling
of resentment among the Southern people must be kept at white-heat,
and that whoever wished to speak a word of caution or moderation
must be held as a public enemy, and subjected to the scorn and the
vengeance of the people.

In this temper a convention was ordered by the Legislature. The
delegates were to be chosen directly by the people, and when
assembled were to determine the future relation of South Carolina
to the Government of the United States. The election was to be
held in four weeks, and the convention was to assemble on the 17th
of December. The unnatural and unprecedented haste of this action,
by which South Carolina proceeded, as she proclaimed, to throw off
her national relations, is more easily comprehended by recalling
the difficult mode provided in every State for a change in its
constitution. In not a single State of the American Union can the
organic law be changed in less than a year, or without ample
opportunity for serious consideration by the people. At that ve